Board of Selectmen

Town Takes Step Toward Getting $2 Million in State Grant Funding for Playhouse Renovation

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The Board of Selectmen on Tuesday took an important step toward securing a $2 million state grant to help offset renovation costs at The Playhouse. The town’s application for a Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development grant follows an announcement last December regarding the state Bond Commission’s approval of the funds. According to town Grant Writer Greg Reilly, the selectmen’s support of the application—including authorization for First Selectman Dionna Carlson to gather and submit documents under the DECD’s Urban Action Grant program—is “one of the final steps in the long process of obtaining the $2 million that was awarded to the town last December, through the state Bond Commission and through the work of our legislative team.”

“One of the things that’s unusual about this case is that the money was granted after the project started,” Reilly told the selectmen at their regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. 

“So we are going back and playing catchup and doing everything that has to be done, including apply for the money,” he continued. “There’s all sorts of things that are required, and this is one of them. We have submitted an application.

Board of Selectmen

Town Seeks To Add New Trails in Waveny

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Town officials say they want to create at least two new trails within Waveny as well as a more formal pedestrian entrance to the southern portion of the park. The first new trail would cross from an existing one near the pedestrian crosswalk at the Saxe baseball field to the turf playing fields of New Canaan High School, officials said during the Board of Selectmen’s regular meeting Tuesday. A more formal pedestrian entrance to the park opposite Conrad
Road also would be installed, they said, with a new trail leading into the southeastern corner of the park and former “cornfields” area, which has been restored as a meadow. The project also would include a “maintenance upgrade of the northeast section, behind the high school and up to Farm Road,” Greg Reilly, the town’s grant writer, said during the selectmen meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. A final part of the project would provide funding to study options for a “buffer between the Merritt Parkway and the southern part of the trail, something that the [Waveny Park] Conservancy has talked about as something they’d like to achieve,” Reilly said.

Government

Town Hires Former ‘New Canaan Advertiser’ Editor as Full-Time Grant Writer

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The Board of Selectmen on Tuesday voted unanimously in favor of hiring a former local news editor to fill the new full-time town position of grant writer. Greg Reilly had worked from 2013 to 2018 as a reporter and editor with two newspapers owned by Hearst Connecticut Media/HAN Network, including the New Canaan Advertiser. “There are a lot of grants out there that we have not applied for that we are eligible for,” the town’s human resources director, Cheryl Pickering Jones, told the selectmen during their regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “And so we are hoping with Greg’s assistance that we will be able to open up some of those doors and apply for some of those grants.”

First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams voted 3-0 in favor of the hiring. Reilly said he’s been working full-time for the town of Stratford as a grant writer with “good success.”

“I think the short story is that we have learned here that the skills of a journalist apply very nicely to those needed for grant-writing,” Reilly, a Stratford resident, said via Zoom.